A retired Catholic Archbishop of Lagos and former President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, has said Nigerian leaders are afraid of
restructuring the country because doing so will reduce their powers.
In a statement on Saturday, Okogie also noted that those calling for the restructuring of the country had failed to explain what precisely they meant by restructuring.
The cleric added that although reducing the number of states or removing the local government as the third tier of government might be necessary, it was not sufficient to tackle the country’s woes.
The cleric said, “The call for restructuring might not have been clearly articulated. But it is a call for far-reaching constitutional reforms in Nigeria. Cosmetic changes will amount to treating the symptoms while neglecting the causes. In concrete terms, it is a call to reduce the power of government and its officials, a call to return the land and its wealth to the people, a call to make being in government a lot less lucrative than what it has always been.
“Given the fact that access to political power in Nigeria is access to Nigeria’s wealth, given the enormous privileges of enormous powers, it is going to be very difficult to convince people in power to have their power reduced. They are afraid of relinquishing power. That is why they are afraid of restructuring.”
Faulting the 1999 Constitution, Okogie said the real restructuring the country needed was a constitutional reform.
He stressed that Nigeria needed a constitution which would make the citizen superior to those in power.
Okogie also described the powers given to the President of the country as enormous.
He said the constitution “made any sitting President an emperor, one who sits on Nigeria’s wealth, particularly her oil wealth, to the detriment of the people on whose land the wealth is found.”
The cleric lamented that the country’s current constitution had made the leaders more powerful than the citizens who elected them into office.
He added, “The 1999 Constitution reflects the prodigality of the period of its birth. The size of government we have is such that the government is the largest employer of labour.
“It is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to prevent political office holders from placing men and women of their ethnic, religious and political affiliations on government payroll, even when they lack the requisite intellectual, moral and technical competence.”
All Credits:PUNCH
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